Sept 15: IT was a throwback to the
eighties in the Karachi University on Thursday when seven people, four of them
students, lost their lives with armed assailants hurling a hand grenade on a
minibus and then opening fire. And as in the eighties, the incident was
harrowing and unsettling, as all mindless deaths, particularly those of the
youth are. KU was the scene of moving scenes where relatives and friends
gathered to mourn the loss of their loved ones. The four dead students belong to
the student wing of a mainstream religious party. This group alleges that an
archrival student wing of another political party is behind the attack. The
animosity between both the political parties and their respective student wings
is legendary in the metropolis. Do we expect reprisals in the future?

The law
and order situation in the city has taken severe blows in the recent past. The
gunning down of well-known advocate Raja Riaz, who had actively participated in
the lawyers' movement against the dismissal of the Chief Justice, is proof of
the flimsy security status of the legal fraternity there. Many allege this was
an attempt to intimidate the legal community, specially since the hearing of the
May 12th case, yet another sorry day in the city's history, is coming up soon.
For the country's commercial capital, Karachi has a lot on its hands. There is
its crippling infrastructure; no monsoons go by without a significant number of
casualties, the roads are falling apart (quite literally in the case of a bridge
recently). Then there are widespread ethnic and political tensions. And, to top
it all off, it has a well-entrenched criminal underworld with solid connections
in the city's political framework. The Nation

Post your Comments/ Views.

*Your name

*Your Email

*City &Country

(i.e. Karachi, Pakistan)

*Type your Comments here:

*Type the code shown

BER22FRI

The Interface may edit your comments and not all comments will be published.